Culture shock!
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Life after college can create culture shock! Yesterday in my blog, I bragged about my son graduating from college. Today, begins the reality of how graduating from college can affect my sons life. Happily, my son has a job and does not begin for a few weeks. He is taking a week off and going to California, to visit his cousins. So, I guess reality does not really set in, until a few weeks from now.
When I graduated from college, my social life had to be reinvented. Most of my friends lived in suburbs 45 minutes to an hour away from me. Most of my high school friends were too busy with their boyfriends, jobs, or whatever, to have any time for me. My job hours versus their job hours were different. I worked for a hospital, so weekends, holidays, or any day could be my hours. I could not always go out on weekends, if I worked the next day, I could not drive an hour to be with my college friends.
The unavailability of your friends is what can lead to culture shock. Back in college you always had the ability to get together with someone. If you wanted to hang out, go party, go out to eat, chill, whatever, there was always someone your age to be with. Now you have people of all ages, certainly not available to you at your beck and call. It can be depressing, after all, you had four years of this culture, and now it is taken away.
Life after college is now the reality. Work days never let up! Five days a week, and you cannot miss work just because you feel like it. Stuff like that will catch up to you. In college, if you did not feel like going to a class or take the day off, you could. There is no boss or coworkers to judge you, or depend on you. The work environment expects results, not good grades. It does not deal strictly with memorization of facts, it deals with implementation of what you learned and what you will continue to learn. After you are done with your work day, you go home to your family or you go home to an apartment. In this apartment, you may not have friends to hang out with. A college day may consist up to five to eight hours; whereas a work day will consist up to eight to twelve hours. Including transportation to and from the job, you may have to stay longer if a project requires extra time.
So, I say to my son and all college graduates welcome to the real world. A life without buddies everywhere, longer days, and quieter evenings. Parties or get togethers may or may not happen on the weekends. The culture shock, or what I like to call the period of immunization will take some time.
CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS CULTURE!